This project has been supported by the TAF Integrated Arts Award, THRIVE! Grants Program, in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Jentel Artist Residency. photos: dan farnum/shelby head
An Infrastructure of Silence was conceived in the fall of 2020 when I began to ask different questions about my cultural heritage of white supremacy and privilege. During this time, I revisited boxes of family documents connecting my ancestry from England to the planter elite that held political power in Colonial Virginia. The bins contain diaries, generational photographs, and documents confirming male ancestors as militiamen and Indian fighters, politicians, and large plantation owners. I also found several wills, leaving enslaved people to the next generation of enslavers. My research developed into a collection of artwork that uncovers family descendants who were complicit in indigenous genocide, enslavement, and systems of white supremacy that are woven into the political and social fabric of our country.